Biography

S. E. Hinton

Born

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Susan Eloise Hinton wrote her first novel, The Outsiders, as a freshman at the University of Tulsa, in 1967, when she was just 17 years old. She wrote under the gender-neutral guise of her initials, S.E. out of a concern that male readers would not read a book narrated by a boy but written by a woman.

With the success of The Outsiders, the moniker (S.E. Hinton) suddenly became a household name. Today, with more than eight million copies in print, the book is the best-selling YA novel in history, and one of the most hauntingly real looks into the minds of teenagers.

Hinton has written several books in her 30-year career, all runaway successes. She currently lives in Tulsa, the town in which she was raised, with her husband and son.